Banned from Facebook's integral scholars

[Edward theurj Berge]

See Joe Corbett's article on this. I'm not a member of Facebook so obviously not on the scholars page. Any of you a member of both and heard of this? If so, comments on the article and the banning?

[Balder]

Yes, I'm a member of the AQAL Integral Scholars group.  I am not familiar with the particular incident discussed in this essay, but I was present for a wave of bannings that took place shortly after a new moderator was appointed to the site.  Among those banned was Tutteji Wachtmeister, the Integral satirist or spoofer whose blog I linked to here a few weeks ago.  A number of people left the forum in protest because of this. 

[Edward theurj Berge]

So what do you think about the banning?

[Balder]

I'm not sure about all instances, since I'm not aware of the full story, but from what I saw, I thought much of it was unnecessary and an over-reaction.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Corbett has a new IW post on some correspondence between him and Don Beck over the banning. Apparently it was Corbett who was banned and it is an interesting email exchange. My first thought was "welcome to the club." This sort of response from kennilinguists has been going on from the very beginning. I was there at the start of I-I, when the first administrators were booted and the 'kids' were installed to do the Lingam's bidding without critical appraisal. I too was excommunicated the minute I offered constructive criticism, just one of a plethora of other invaluable personnel to get the same axing.

In Corbett's post he finds that one reason for such banning is because of "an affliction of general pathology in those who work closely with hierarchically-oriented developmental models." Where have I heard that before? I don't know if Corbett is aware of our forum but I emailed him an invitation to join, as I think he'd be an asset here.

[Edward theurj Berge]

I'm reminded of Edwards' writing on altitude sickness at the beginning of this thread. An excerpt:

"As with all lenses the altitude lens is subject to different kinds of truncations and reductionisms. I call these reductionisms the varieties of altitude sickness and, in a spirit of playful finger-pointing, I will briefly describe a few of these here:

1. Lens absolutism: This is the general problem of relying solely on one lens to explain vertical development.

2. Stagism: This is where all developmental capacity is thought to be function of the whole-of-system movement from one stage to another. This ignores the evidence that incremental learning and evolutionary process can result in transformative development.

3. Developmentalism: This is the view that transformative change is the result of changes in an individual’s own structures rather than the structures that exist in their social and material surrounds.

4. Immediatism: This is the lack of awareness of the role of mediation in vertical development. For example relying on Piagetian models of structural change to the exclusion of Vygotskian ones.

5. Pigeon-hole(ism): This is the tendency for stage-based theorists to assume that those who are critical of stage-based models are relativists.

6. Vertical co-dependency (student variety): This is the assumption that only those at a higher stage can teach those from lower stages.

7. Vertical co-dependency (teacher variety): This is the assumption that those at a lower developmental stage need to be taught by those from a higher developmental level.

8. Communal altitudism: This is the assumption that a community of the adequate can only be constituted by those of requisite altitudinal level.

9. Individual altitudism: This is the view that you must know the altitude of your critic to judge whether their criticism is valid or not.

10. Altitude metricism: This is the seriously mistaken view that we need to be able to measure the altitude of individuals to be able to help them develop.

11. Lack of oxygenism: This is the syndrome of delusional symptoms that the human mind suffers from when it reaches a certain altitude.

12. Altitudinal fascism: This is the illness that besets a country when those who wish to take or maintain political power view all of its history in terms of the stage-based development of an elite group.

13. Altitudinal collectivism: This is the illness that besets a country when those who wish to take or maintain political power rationalise any action in terms of the stage-based development of the collective.

14. Altitudinal leaderism: This is the assumption that we need enlightened leaders to have enlightened communities."

[Edward theurj Berge]

The SRIS group led me to this Meta-Integral blog post: "Breaking the meme: From insular integral to integral tradition." It's from earlier this summer but new to me. Anyone else familiar with it?

[Balder]

Yes, I read it this summer; Mark posted it to set the tone (and theme) for the upcoming conference on "Integral Kosmopolitanism" -- wanting to move away from the meme that "Wilber = Integral."